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Clinton Aide Denies Plot To Hide E-mails In Lewinsky Probe

September 02, 2000|By From Tribune News Services.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former deputy White House counsel Cheryl Mills testified Friday that she did not speak with President Clinton or senior aides about a computer error that kept her office from reviewing e-mail messages under subpoena.

She also indicated she took a hands-off role in overseeing a 1998 search to determine if the glitch prevented subpoenaed e-mails from being turned over to investigators in the Monica Lewinsky case.

Judicial Watch, which brought the lawsuit that uncovered the missing e-mails, contends the White House knew the scope of the problem.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth has been holding hearings for several weeks to determine how to retrieve the thousands of messages that were not properly archived from September 1996 to November 1998.

Mills said she assigned White House lawyer Michelle Peterson in June 1998 to compare messages submitted to the office of Kenneth Starr, then the independent counsel, with ones produced by another search by technicians of White House e-mail accounts.

White House lawyers wanted to determine if that second search had produced missing messages under subpoena; they found none.